As a conventional marketing means for attracting customers, advertising using public television broadcasting, cable television broadcasting, radio broadcasting, newspapers, or various magazines have been usually used as shown in FIG. 1 for explaining a customer attracting form using a conventional marketing means. However, with the spread of the Internet, keyword advertising, search engine banner advertising, certain site advertising, e-mail advertising, pop-up advertising, event advertising, overture advertising, community advertising, giveaway advertising, and the like have been used online.
As an advertising means has been diversified, an advertiser's advertising expense increases, leading to an increase in a product price. That is, customers defray advertising expenses.
In particular, in case of online marking, event advertisings intended for unspecified individuals are generally used to induce customers to purchase products or services, however, an effect of such event advertising is temporary. In order to continuously maintain a marketing effect, a huge amount of marketing expenses should be continuously injected, nevertheless, it is difficult to accurately calculate an advertising effect.
Due to the above problem, social commerce using word-out-mouth marketing (WOMM) has recently become popular. There exist social commerce of various forms such as a business model in which a producer constructs social commerce by himself/herself as a sort of online group purchase, a social shopping mall in which a group purchase business model is combined with a social network, a membership social shopping mall having a membership system, a social commerce open market in which a commerce platform combined with a social network is open to public and anyone is allowed to register product selling information.
Further, as new types of marketing methods, suggested have been a method of paying a part of operating expense and revenue to a member who introduced a member who purchased a product or service as a point (see Korean Patent Publication No. 2002-83022) and a method of comparing two or more product selling conditions received from two or more affiliate stores that provide product selling conditions intended for members of a community group established in cooperation with two or more clients, and selecting an affiliate store corresponding to the community group (see Korean Patent Publication No. 2006-62674).
The social commerce is advantages since sellers can reduce advertising expenses and customers can purchase products at a low price. However, online space (shopping mall) should be constructed, and customers are required to participate in product promotion through a social network so that a predetermined number of products can be sold. In addition, the number of purchasers who purchased the same product should exceed a number suggested by the seller, and it is a sort of event. Thus, it is difficult to continuously apply the social commerce to general products or services.
That is, a purchaser's choice is limited to a group purchase product or service suggested by a seller.
Further, in the social commerce, sales increase in proportion to the number of participating purchasers, however, a network of purchasers is not formed.
In addition, the method of providing a point to high-ranking members is a sort of pyramid type marketing, which is also called network marketing. Further, the method is a marketing method of promoting a certain product to a certain purchaser. The seller has to share a profit with high-ranking members, and thus a marketing range is extremely limited. That is, since a high-ranking purchaser and a low-ranking purchaser have a one-to-one correspondence relation, a marketing target and range are extremely limited.
Furthermore, since a product or service to sell is limited to a product or service that can be applied to pyramid type marketing, a purchaser's choice is limited.
Meanwhile, the affiliate store selecting method is also a sort of group purchase. It is similar to a public tender since a plurality of affiliate stores suggest selling conditions to the members of the community group, and the affiliate store is selected by a comparison of the selling condition information. A community member and an affiliate store that provides a product or service have a one-to-one correspondence relation. Thus, even in the affiliate store selecting method, a marketing target and range are extremely limited.
In particular, the recommendation of people around a purchaser such as a family, a company colleague, and a friend has great influence on selection of a product or service, and most of purchases are made through such recommendation.
However, in sellers' view, sales increase by such recommendation, nevertheless, any benefit is not given to a recommender that recommends people around him/her to purchase a seller's product or service.
For example, let us assume that a person A who desires to have a meeting around a station D requested a person B who frequently has a meeting around the station D to recommend a meeting place, and the person B recommended a restaurant C. In this case, the restaurant C does not give any profit to the person B even though sales occurred by the person B's recommendation.
A concrete description will be made with reference to FIG. 2 for explaining an example of analyzing a network of purchasers with respect to a seller. Personal connections of customers who visit stores of a franchise company having about 60 stores in Korea were analyzed with customers' consent. All visitors were grouped into 13 groups. As a result of analysis, the following was found. In 8 groups among 13 groups, a network was formed between groups. In the remaining 5 groups, any relation is not made between groups, that is, any network was not formed between groups.
Sales, occurred by high-ranking 4 groups, occupied about 54% of a total of sales, and sales, occurred by the 8 groups having a network therebetween, occupied about 80% of a total of sales.
That is, it was found that about 80% of sales have occurred by purchasers having a network formed therebetween. It was evaluated that if customers belonging to the 8 groups receive a bad impression or are not satisfied with a service, a total of sales is reduced by about 14%, whereas if customers belonging to the 8 groups are provided with a good service, a total of sales increases by about 10%.
As described above, there is a problem in that it is difficult to concretely grasp a network of customers even though a network of customers is important to sellers.